Efficiency: Most payload per liftoff thrust

[closette]

Hi Sal,

Just post your ships and ask users to suggest names, perhaps? Looking forward to seeing those designs.

And I agree, Joules per kg would be a better measure of fuel efficiency. If you divide by the speed of light squared we\'ll even get a dimensionless number, since mass-energy is mc² anyway! (It will be a very small number though).

This challenge is OK though because engines are more expensive, and not easily replaced like tanks, so it\'s just a slightly differently weighted cost factor.

[jebbe]

And I agree, Joules per kg would be a better measure of fuel efficiency.

I realize that you probably mean Joules per Kilogram of fuel, but in a way, we actually do have J/kg as the unit of our score already: we divide energy by thrust, so we get Joules per Newton (which equals meters). Dividing the force in Newton\'s by the gravity acceleration (as is commonly done when giving thrust in kilograms or pounds), we would have a unit of Joules per Kilogram.

So in order to get that unit, all we would have to do is multiply our score by a factor of 10 m/s^2 (or 9.8 something at that), and we\'d have our Joules per Kilogram.